"But know this, girl of mine," Seymour repeated. "Get him I will."
Sergeant Russell Seymour of the Royal Canadian again was mounted--actually astride a horse with spur at heel and a fine feel of leather between his knees. The best part of the continent separated him from the Montreal fairyland and the regal beauty in whom his ambition and hope lay centered.
An exigency of the service--the policing of the mushroom gold camp which he was approaching--had been responsible for the sudden shift of action's scene. Not that the hunt for the Armistice embezzler had been forgot or abandoned, but with the idea that a cold trail might warm if left alone for a while, its crossing effected when least expected.
The problem at Gold, British Columbia, was so large a one that the authorities had overlooked no advantage. The fact that Seymour had never seen service in the province presented the attractive possibility of his making a preliminary survey in plain clothes, severely plain, in truth--as plain as stained khaki, scuffed leather and battered felt could materialize.
The fact that the region was that selected by Moira's father for his missionary activities and that she proposed soon to join the parent did not make the summer prospect less attractive for the big policeman. The lovely creature riding beside him, however, was not the Irish girl but another he had overtaken entirely by chance.
"Of course," he was saying to her, "it wouldn't be a worth-while gold rush if there wasn't plenty of crowds and excitement. Do you think I'm in time?"
"Oh, there's still a chance for you to locate a pay claim--if luck's riding with you," she said cheerfully. "Scarcely a day passes without someone reporting a new 'discovery.' But you're just three days too late for our first real excitement. One of the B.C.X. stages was held up and robbed last Monday."
Almost did the sergeant give himself away at this crime report. In more ways than his fair informant could possibly imagine, he felt too late.
At a recent conference in Hazelton, a railroad town on the Grand Trunk Pacific, Assistant Commissioner Baxter, in command of the division in which the new diggings lay, had decided that the sergeant should remain incognito until he had had opportunity to study the field of his new important command. In the role of one of the gold-crazed "rushers" the news of the camp would float unrestrained in his presence. He should be able to get an advance line on those who were prone to lawlessness, as well as identify the element which might be counted on the side of law and order. Moreover, he could form an unbiased opinion as to the prospective permanency of the camp and the number of constables needed to police it satisfactorily.
